Review: More than a game, GTA4 is five-star entertainment

Comment: GTA IV scares people in the same way Elvis once did

When Niko Bellic steps into a New York cityscape, he does so with the potential to become a defining figure of our times.

This grim-faced ex-soldier will visit prostitutes and casually run down pedestrians, helping to redefine the generational divide between outraged parents and their teenagers who cannot wait to spend hours exploring Bellic’s seedy world of drugs and gangsters.

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Even before his arrival there is consternation at the ethnicity of the source of the mayhem — the “hero” is unmistakeably Eastern European and an immigrant.

What is less certain is whether Bellic, as he makes his way across town killing policemen, will live up to his billing — the hope and hype, fear and dismay, that he embodies the future of entertainment.

Bellic is the protagonist in the latest interactive computer game, and his advance billing is enough to make even those who have never touched a console perform a double take.

Industry experts predict that GTA IV will generate $400 million (£201 million) in its first week of sales alone, the same figure that Gone with the Wind has grossed internationally since 1939.

His rampage through Liberty City, a meticulously rendered New York, reflects the rise of a 70-million-selling video game franchise that has become so powerful that Hollywood studios regard the new game as a threat to their action blockbusters.

Released on Tuesday for the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles, retailers are reporting record pre-orders for the 18-rated game, which makes no concession to critics of the amoral violence and sexual content in its predecessors.

The pinnacle of a British-created phenomenon, GTA IV utilises technology developed by bioengineering experts at Oxford University to deliver a new realism to the bloody action, which also mixes mainstream with the extreme.

More than a mere “shoot’em up” experience, players can stop off at the comedy club to watch a Ricky Gervais routine or surf websites embedded within the game. An online multiplayer option allows up to 16 gamers to play simultaneously. Figures apart, games such as GTA IV have a fan base far wider than those who regard it as the preserve of young men may suspect. Indeed, it is not just hardcore gamers who are excited by the possibilities of gaming.

Fay Weldon, the novelist who became attached to the virtual world game The Sims, said: “The best games are about improving your score and I like to test my mind against the inventor of the game. Grand Theft Auto presents players with a world of deliquency which is very attractive to some people.”

Steven Spielberg has been filling in the time between takes on his latest Indiana Jones film by developing three new game titles for Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest computer games company.

The first of these, Boom Blox, will be released in early May. “I had a Space Invaders machine in my office for over a decade,” he told The Times recently, “but now I’m impressed with the way games have evolved. The challenge of story-telling in a non-linear way is very exciting. With a film you start with a story and end a couple of hours later. Games take hours of exploration.”

Barry Gibb, a neuroscientist who has tested the impact of games for Nintendo, said: “The new Grand Theft Auto game will have a major cultural impact because it is one of the few titles which make people who have never played before spend £180 on a console.”

He said it was so successful because it created the illusion that you can create your own story in an entirely open-ended environment. “That’s a different experience to films.”

To many, however, the Grand Theft Auto series epitomises the amoral violence and dubious sexual content that prompted Gordon Brown to invite Tanya Byron’s analysis on the impact of such games.

Dan Houser, Bellic’s English creator, said he created the scenario because Hollywood had failed to produce a decent gangster film. “We see games as being an emergent art form, that will eventually supplant or challenge movies,” claimed Mr Houser, 34, co-founder of Rockstar games and an Oxford graduate.

A spokesman for Amazon said: “Despite costing three times as much per unit, we forecast shipping more copies of Grand Theft Auto IV than 2007’s major DVD releases such as Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End and Transformers. Video game titles are now a major part of the home entertainment industry.”

The release precedes the introduction of a new mandatory games ratings system envisaged by Dr Byron in her recent report. Tim Ingham, editor of the online magazine MCV, said: “Retailers will be stricter than ever on a game that will be sure to at least catch the interest of younger teenagers. The industry hopes to see parents who may have previously picked up violent material for their young son without a thought finally saying ‘no’ for the first time.”

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants fears the game, with its central character of a brutal Balkan immigrant, could make life hard for Eastern Europeans. A spokesman said: “The figures show that East European immigrants are not proportionately responsible for any increase in crime. This plays on untrue stereotypes.”

Hot property

15m Number of times the cinema-style trailer for GTA IV has been downloaded (Source: Rockstar)

$400m Expected worldwide sales in first week (Source: Variety)

$404m First week’s gross for Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Hollywood’s biggest opening week (Source: Variety)

$300m Expected first-week gross of Iron Man, out May 23

1 week Minimum wait for next stock to arrive at Amazon (Source: Amazon)

70m Cumulative sales to date of the Grand Theft Auto series (excluding GTA IV) (Source: Take Two Interactive)

40 hours Minimum time it will take to play the game straight through (Source: Rockstar)

$50m Amount that Microsoft is believed to have paid for an exclusive downloadable GTA IV add-on map, to be released this winter